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arXiv · 2607.24320

Continual-RL for Generalization in Autonomous Racing on the RoboRacer Platform

Joel Siegert·Edoardo Ghignone·Michele Magno
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Abstract

A key challenge in modern robotics is to adapt to changing environments, a challenge that is exacerbated when simulations cannot encompass every possible real-world configuration, and therefore Reinforcement Learning (RL) in the physical world becomes necessary. Continual Reinforcement Learning provides the tools to address this challenge; however, both the frameworks and the methods remain underexplored. Autonomous Racing and in particular the RoboRacer competition provide a testing ground for such methods, as learning to drive on a new track-floor combination with the least amount of new experience naturally frames a continual learning problem. This work tries to address this gap by proposing a continual RL framework based on Continual Backpropagation that is able, with only real-world data, to train a generalistic policy on a set of tracks and then fine- tune it within 15 minutes to outperform classical controllers. Furthermore, a comparison method based on offline RL is proposed, and a simulation analysis of the plasticity properties of the methods is conducted.

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Joel Siegert, Edoardo Ghignone, Michele Magno. 2026-07-27. Continual-RL for Generalization in Autonomous Racing on the RoboRacer Platform. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24320

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